HONEOYE, N.Y. — A German shepherd mix known as Pooh Bear did something doggone amazing. After getting lost nearly a year ago, the dogged pooch somehow trekked 30 miles in the direction of her owner's new home.

"When my daughter asked me what I wanted for Christmas, all I said was that I wanted Pooh Bear back," owner Betty Gartley said in Thursday's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "Getting her back is a miracle."

The gentle, 10-year-old dog ran out of the house last February in the Rochester suburb of Greece and disappeared. Gartley and her husband, Lee, searched for her for months in vain.

"She wasn't a dog that would just wander off," Gartley said. "She had been let out of the house alone many times before and she always came back when she was called."

By the time the couple moved to their new home last year in this Finger Lakes hamlet, some 40 miles southeast of Rochester, they had pretty much given up hope of seeing Pooh Bear again.

But the dog evidently was on their trail.

In October, Pooh Bear was spotted darting in and out of traffic in Canandaigua — 30 miles from her old home but still 12 miles from here — and was taken to an animal shelter. Lee Gartley called the shelter Jan. 3 when he heard Pooh Bear being described on a dog-adoption television show.

"When Mrs. Gartley came in to look at the dog, you could see from the dog's reaction that there was no doubt that it was her dog," Ed McGuigan, director of the Ontario County Humane Society, told the newspaper.

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